Samsung Galaxy S III reportedly as thin as Motorola Droid Razr

The Motorola Droid Razr on top of Samsung's Galaxy S II. (Nathan Olivarez-Giles/Los…)

Samsungs's next big smartphone release, the so-called Galaxy S III, may end up challenging the Motorola Droid Razr as the thinnest 4G handset on store shelves when it arrives later this year, according to new reports.

The Galaxy S III, as the next major Samsung Galaxy S phone is expected to be called, will come in at a thickness of about about 7 millimeters, or about 0.27 inch thick, according to a report from South Korea's Electronic Times News translated by the website BGR.

The Droid Razr, which was released in November, is 0.28 inch thick and currently owns the bragging right of thinnest 4G smartphone on the market -- a major marketing point for Motorola.

The Galaxy S II is 8.49-millimeters, or about 0.33 inch thick.

Unnamed sources also told the Electronics Times News that the Galaxy S III will launch in May, which is contrary to earlier rumors of an April release, BGR noted.

The report also said the new Galaxy S III phone will also feature an eight-megapixel rear camera and a two-megapixel front camera -- which is the same shooter setup as the Galaxy S II.

What will differ, according to BGR and previous reports as well, is the rumored internal hardware of the Galaxy S III, such as a new quad-core processor, two gigabytes of RAM and Google's Android Ice Cream Sandwich operating system (with some Samsung software tweaks) installed.

Previously, Samsung has only said that it is working on a follow-up to the successful Galaxy S II smartphone, which was sold with screen sizes of 4.3 and 4.5 inches, and that the new Galaxy phone would make its debut at its own press event, not the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Spain (Feb. 27-March 1), as the rumor mill had been predicting.

Samsung hasn't yet confirmed that the next Galaxy S phone will be called the Galaxy S III, though that's what much of the tech press is dubbing the new phone as it will be a successor to the Galaxy S II.